Gray Ghost Battle Composite

[John Hackney]

Here is a composite made from 6 shots.



Canon EOS 7D Mark II
Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
ss 1/2000
f/8
ISO 500-640
Shots were converted with basic PP and cropped in Canon Digital Photo Professional 4 and then imported into PS CC via Photomerge. Blend Images, Geometric Distortion Correction and Content Aware Fill were chosen. Homes in the background were removed. More CAF was done in foreground fill areas to better match. NR, final sharpening and lighten, highlight and shadow work were done.

[Nancy Bell]

Great technique for showing the flight pattern! I haven't worked with Photomerge so I don't know what is possible. The middle two birds overlap each other and it would be clearer if there was some space between them. Another possible presentation would be an extreme pano look, cropping down to just above the highest wing on the highest right side bird, and then cropping up from the bottom to balance. The result would be long and somewhat thin that totally emphasizes the bird flight. Right now my eye is a bit distracted by the layer of brightness above the birds. Is this a male Northern Harrier?

Welcome to the forum, John!

[John Hackney]

Thank you Nancy.
The middle birds are locked together and this was not an artifact of the merge.
I attempted to do the Photomerge with the full frames of all six shots and only got two shots of the birds instead of six.
My solution was to cropped the middle four shots to the width that would almost reach the birds in the shots before and after them.
The shot on the left was cropped on the right to almost where the second shot birds were and the shot on the right cropped on the left almost to the the 5th shot.
No cropping was done vertically. I then converted the shots to jpgs. This was done to create over laps in the photos so the programming would stitch them together better like one would a panorama. I then did clean up and cropped to the final product. I did consider the extreme pano for the reason you stated.

Yes those are male Northern Harriers.

[Nancy Bell]

All good information on your technique. How cool to capture all that interaction and be able to put it together!

[John Hackney]

All good information on your technique. How cool to capture all that interaction and be able to put it together!

Thank you Nancy. Sometimes the action comes in a way that it is impossible using this technique to get like this as the action overlaps. One can always mask off the protagonists and paste them to a different background at spacing one likes.

[Anita Bower]

I like what you did here. The birds in flight across the grasses, with some in the grasses themselves. Nancy's comments are right on. I tried another solution to the bright bg--I added a texture. I may have used one that improperly changed the color of the birds, but another more appropriate texture could be used. This may not be to your liking, but I wanted to give you an idea.

[Anita Bower]

Here is a picture of the layers I used. I did a Vignette Blur in Effex Pro, then added two textures.

[John Hackney]

That has a nice effect to it Anita. Well done.

I had thought about a graduated darkening but forgot about it after completing the merge.

[John Hackney]

Here is a repost after burning the bright area.

[Anita Bower]

Here is a repost after burning the bright area.

Attachment 158413

I could not view the attachment. Could you post the photo with your comment?

[Dennis Bishop]

Great captures and processing on this. It sounds like a lot of work, but I think the result was worth it. Your re-post with the bright area at the top toned down looks good. Because the line of flight is in such a good location vertically, I like your solution better than cropping out that part of the background.

Welcome aboard!!!

[John Hackney]

Thank you Dennis. Probably took around an hour total after basic PP. If I knew what I was doing better I think 15 minutes at least would be removed.

[Anita Bower]

Here is a repost after burning the bright area.

Much better! My eye isn't pulled into the bright bg.